Page 113 of Ordered Home for the Holidays
“What is your forfeit, my love?”
She darted her gaze up to meet his.My love. An endearment he might use on any woman. Every other woman who’d felt impaled by that spear.
“You must be true to me,” she whispered. “I have your fidelity. You vow to put aside all others and save your pleasure for me.”
“I will.” He sat on the bed and pulled her into his lap. She was still fully dressed, the skirts of her petticoat and gown draped around them. He slid his hands beneath the fabric to urge her knees to either side of his hips, and his hot palm on the bare skin of her thighs, sliding over her bottom and then below, fed the fire within her to roaring life.
“You must show me how to pleasure you,” she whispered as he claimed her mouth once more.
“And you must teach me how to pleasure you. We will learn together.”
He moved his mouth to her breast, and Mad let her head fall back as need overtook her. She scrambled for thought.
“I don’t wish to be married in St. George’s,” she panted. “I want to be married in St. Mary’s in Woughton on the Green, on St. Valentine’s Day. And no quiet hidden ceremony, either. I want to make a festival of it.”
“Anything if it means I get to take you home that night as my bride.”
His fingers beneath her skirt crept between her legs, sliding over the spot that begged for him. He rubbed her there as he pulled with his mouth at her nipple, and a gush of wetness came down. She moaned, and he chuckled.
“No going off without me to have adventures and travel the world.” She screwed her eyes shut, shuddering as his fingers and mouth fed a building ache that was going to burn all through her. “I want to have adventures with you.”
“And I want you with me. Love me, Mad,” he growled against her skin, his fingers swirling in patterns that summoned magic. “Love me.”
“I do. I do,” she said, nearly sobbing. He cupped her bare bottom and urged her forward atop him. His hard member probed against her entrance as he coaxed into her, bit by bit, spreading her legs to take him in, using his fingers to moisten and ease his way.
She moaned. Garrick was inside of her. She’d wanted nothing but this for the last decade of her life. He choseher.
“I loved you the moment I first saw you,” she whispered. “Climbing the pear tree at the bridge. I wanted one, and you picked it for me.”
He slid further, charming, teasing. Taunting her with a nibble of the pleasure to come. “And you never scolded me for stealing from your family’s property.” His gaze searched her face. “Mad. You climbed trees better than I did. You never needed me to fetch that pear for you.”
“Yes, I did,” she whispered, holding his dark gaze. “I needed a friend, and you gave me that.”
“Mad.” He groaned, and his eyelashes fluttered as he entered her fully, filling her. He was beautiful and so strong, so solid in his honed body, yet so tender when he touched her.
“You beautiful, maddening creature,” he breathed. “Ten days ago you wouldn’t have me. What changed? What did I do?”
She wriggled around him, certain that, as nice as this was, there was something more. “You made me believe in you,” she said.
There were no words for a while, only the language of touch and kisses as he moved inside her. The intimacy was unbearable and exactly what she craved. She felt seared and bound by the keen pleasure, by the aching tide that pulled her to him. He read her every breath and moan and somehow knew the rhythm that drove her to madness, pushing her up the peak, up, and then over. When she trembled and broke he was there to hold her, swallowing her cry with his own groan as he shuddered and found release. The heartbeat of ecstasy pulsed through them both, bodies united as their hearts, their souls.
She drifted back to earth and opened her eyes. “I love you.”
“And I you. I am wholly yours, Mad.”
He met her gaze steadily, unblinking, though his eyes were hooded with sated pleasure. He didn’t blink.
He wasn’t lying.
He withdrew from her gently and reached his handkerchief between them, cleaning her. “And now you have to marry me,” he added, “because I spilled inside you. Such talk there will be if my heir arrives eight months after the wedding.”
“Why didn’t you say yes three years ago?” She leaned her head drowsily against his shoulder, listening as his heart slowed to a steady beat. He was warm and safe and hers, now. Everything she wanted in this life. She touched his jaw. “We could have been doingthisso much sooner.”
He chuckled and turned his head to kiss her fingers. “I was waiting for me to grow up.” His arms tightened, pulling her closer, and he brushed his lips through her hair. “I’m glad you waited for me, Mad.”
“I am, too.”
He set her on her feet so suddenly she blinked. “Now cease your seductions, you siren, and help me dress so we can return to the party. We cannot rob Tofty of his night to rule us.”
